1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to cellular telephones, and in particular to user features of cellular telephones. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for storing and providing electronic business cards to another cellular telephone user.
2. Description of the Related Art
The utilization of cellular telephones (cell phones) is becoming increasingly popular in today's wireless environment. Cellular phone service is provided for both business use and personal use via individual cellular phones, which connect to particular cellular service providers, such as Sprint and GTE.
The popularity of cellular phones has led to growing desire for improvements in available features (both hardware and software) for user satisfaction. The major improvements have included the creation of light-weight phones and inclusion of advanced features, such as web access, call waiting, caller ID, time display, etc. Some of these features are provided as a menu option that may be enabled or disabled, i.e., turned on or off, by the user.
The convenience of utilizing cellular phones to conduct business, particularly when the user is outside of a “traditional” office setting is very important reason for the fast expansion of cellular phone use. An individual is able to keep in touch with his office and with other business contacts—old and new—while outside of his office.
Typically, when a new contact is made, either business or personal, the preferred method of providing business contact information is with a business card. When a person desires to give a customer or client a business card, the card must be physically presented to the recipient. Providing a potential customer or client with a business card allows the business person to establish a “foothold” with a customer in a professional manner.
In today's global business environment, with the wide proliferation of cell phones and the frequency with which business is conducted over these cellular phones, a large number of business contacts are made over the cellular phones. Consequently, a business person is often not in the physical presence of his new contact (customer or client) and thus, when conducting business via a cellular phone, the business person is unable to immediately present a business card to the contact. Therefore, the business person has to resort to mailing the business card to the contact or providing his contact information verbally over the cellular phone. This mode of establishing new business contacts is not desirable, since it involves extra steps to get the business card to the contact and/or forces the contact to have to write the information down on a sheet of paper. Additionally, since the first impression is the one which ultimately determines if the potential customer or client in fact becomes a customer/client, providing that professionally done business card with all required contact information goes a long way in appealing to the sense of professionalism.
With present cellular phone design, caller ID information is provided to a call recipient when a call is received on the recipient's cellular phone. The identified number may then be stored on the recipient's phone. However, this information is often limited to the caller's number, and the caller's name is often not provided for the recipient to recognize this number for later contact, the call recipient has to manually enter the remaining data that may be relevant, such as the caller's name and address, etc. Further, it is usually the person from whom the call originates, who wishes the recipient to have the information readily available for a later contact.
The present invention recognizes that it would be desirable to be able to immediately provide remotely-contacted customers or clients with a business card. A method and system by which a user communicating via a cellular phone can electronically transmit a business card via his cellular telephone to a contact's cellular phone would be a welcomed improvement. These and other benefits are provided by the invention described herein.